These were my colleagues

Today is World AIDS Day. I attended one of the area services which was at First United Methodist Church of Ferndale. They had four of the blocks from the AIDS Memorial Quilt on display in the sanctuary. The quilt is made up of panels six by three feet (the size of a coffin or grave). The creators decorate it any way they want to honor the one who died from AIDS. Eight panels are connected to form a block 12 feet square. The quilt was conceived by Cleve Jones who made the first panel, which was put into block 1. That block was on display today. There are now about 6000 blocks, which means 48,000 panels commemorating 94,000 people. That's estimated to be 20% of those who died of AIDS in America. The quilt is the largest community folk art project in the world.

After the service we went to the social hall for dinner. One more block was displayed there. This one was a single 12x12 panel with a poem and perhaps 25 photos printed into the cloth. Alas, I didn't learn what the people had in common.

Many of the panels had birth and death dates. Most of the deaths on the panels on display were 1985-1995 (after that drugs were much better at controlling the disease). I also noticed most of the birth years were 1945-1963 and many of them were born the same year as I was. These were my colleagues. But they died at the ages of 25-45.